


slow on the uptake

by swarls



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (kinda), Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Stiles Stilinski, Full Shift Werewolves, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Derek, Pack Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 21:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swarls/pseuds/swarls
Summary: Laura brings Derek and the rest of her betas home to Beacon Hills. They find family in a coffee shop.





	slow on the uptake

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this at 5AM Christmas morning because I couldn't sleep.  
> Erica, Isaac, and Boyd are from New York in this fic and are betas to Laura. Both Scott and Jackson are werewolves, but I didn't get into who bit them, why, and what happened to that person. Honestly this was just thrown up onto my google drive without much thought. It's pretty much just a load of self-entertainment. Hope you enjoy!

It was accidental really that his eyes flashed electric blue the first time he met Stiles the barista in the local coffee shop. When he told Laura later the next day, warning her more than anything, she had laughed and told him he was a fucking idiot. But it had been the first time in years he had heard that sound so he hadn’t argued. 

When he went back to the coffee shop again he realized why he had flashed his eyes. Stiles smelled like another wolf. It was subtle, so not a wolf himself. Mixed with the overwhelming scent of coffee beans and pastries and the influx of customers it was lost. But it was there. And it made Derek’s wolf want to jump across the counter and cover the boy in his own scent. When he told Laura this––though why he thought it was a good idea, he had no fucking idea. Maybe he had lost his mind since returning to Beacon Hills––she didn’t laugh. Instead she got this determined look in her eyes and told him she needed to meet Stiles the barista. 

It was more frustrating than anything that Laura immediately hit it off with Stiles the barista. She had him clutching his sides with laughter in mere minutes where Derek had barely spoken anything outside of his coffee order. She had always been so much better at getting people to open up and love her, even after the fire that ruined their family. In New York she had gotten them Isaac, Erica, and Boyd. Derek had barely managed to make friends with them by the time they were convincing the three of them to pack away their entire lives and move across the country to California. Laura insisted that the pack loved him, but he wasn’t so sure. 

Derek met Scott McCall three weeks after first meeting Stiles the barista. If it was possible, Erica got along even better with Stiles than Laura. They struck up a conversation about superheroes and became instant best friends. Derek had plenty to say about Marvel vs. DC, but instead of offering his own opinion he watched. He learned that both Erica and Stiles enjoyed DC, but thought Marvel did a much better job at intertwining the universe together as a whole. Erica prefered Adam West’s batman even though she grew up on Christian Bale, and Stiles went on a thirty minute rant about why no one should have played batman except Adam West until Christian Bale came along. By the end of the rant only Derek was left listening, but Stiles didn’t seem to mind talking to the air. 

When they left, Derek was greeted with an open mouthed stare when he told Stiles that his favorite trilogy was the original X-Men, but he liked the comics better. Derek almost smiled when he watched Scott forcibly pull Stiles away. Laura clapped him on the back and grinned at him in a way that made his inner wolf sigh and curl up into a content ball. “It’s good to be home, baby brother.” She said. Derek only nodded and leaned into her side more heavily. She smelled like grief and excitement and joy and fear altogether, and he knew exactly how she felt.

The third time Derek went into the coffee shop Stiles wasn’t there. Instead there was a boy named Danny. He took one look at Derek and smiled sweetly. He had nice dimples, but Derek only frowned and ordered his coffee briskly. Instead of leaving right away like he usually did, he sat at one of the far tables and pulled his book out of his jacket pocket. Today he was reading a book about WWII and the German strategies and how they were ultimately defeated. 

Three refills later and finally Stiles was walking into the shop. Their eyes met almost instantly and Derek found himself actually smiling. It was mostly just a quick uptick of the corner of his mouth, but it was more than anyone other than his pack had gotten in a long time. When Derek saw the beautiful ginger trailing after him, though, his face closed off and he turned back to his book. 

If Derek snuck out of the coffee shop while Stiles was ordering his coffee, well, no one had to know. 

The fourth time Derek walked into the coffee shop he saw the red headed girl again and almost turned right back out the door and left. Before he could do that though, she called his name. It was the surprise that she actually knew his name more than anything that made him stop and look down at her. She was very short. But he could tell she was a fiery little thing, not to be messed with. He found himself hunching his shoulders ever so slightly as she looked at him slowly from head to toe as if she were sizing him up. “The boy really knows how to pick them,” she huffed. When she looked into his eyes again she smiled. It seemed genuine and she didn’t smell like anything other than curiosity and hesitation. “Let me buy you a drink.” It was more an order than an offer and he found himself nodding. 

Stiles was the barista that day and he kept looking between Lydia––whose name he only knew because Stiles had asked what the hell she thought she was doing when she led Derek up to the front counter––and Derek. He smelled worried, like he thought Derek would hurt the girl or something. It made him frown. He made sure that his hands remained in his jacket pocket until he finally took the cup from the counter. Derek was going to stick around to read some more, but he didn’t think Stiles wanted him around Lydia, so he instead thanked her and left. 

Laura told him he was an idiot, but he had no idea why. She refused to tell him. 

The next time he saw Scott McCall was at a barbeque at the newly renovated Hale house in the preserve. It had been worked on since before they even returned to Beacon Hills , but the new addition made over the unattached garage was finally finished. It was made specifically for Derek because he still couldn’t fully settle into the home that he got his family killed. 

Laura was trying to get Scott to join their pack. He was an omega, but he was so in control of his wolf that he didn’t think he needed an alpha. Derek wanted to punch him sometimes for being stupid, but instead tried his best to be polite. Having another beta in the pack would be good. And it was just a bonus that with Scott came Stiles. He hadn’t realized though that with Scott also came their parents, Lydia, Danny, and Jackson, who was also a wolf. 

Derek knew the sheriff, John he asked to be called, because he was the deputy that was first on the scene the night of the fire. The first words he said to Derek after almost a decade of seeing him had been an apology for what happened to their family. Laura had stepped up beside him with a comforting hand on his shoulder and a thank you. Derek simply nodded and looked at the ground with a clenched jaw. 

Surprisingly Derek got along with Melissa better than anyone. She was a nurse at the hospital and had known her son’s friends since they were all in elementary school. She talked to Derek about them in a quiet, friendly tone as a way to pass the time while everyone else conversed and laughed together and played cornhole. If Melissa noticed the way Derek constantly watched Stiles, she never said anything. It was this that made Derek finally relax enough to tell her a quick story of Laura the first time she got lice. When Melissa threw her head back with a bubble of laughter Derek didn’t even notice the way both Stiles and his father looked over at them with shocked expressions. 

During dinner John sat on one side of Derek and Melissa took up his other. Stiles sat across from his dad and carried on a long conversation with the sheriff about this show called Stranger Things, though Derek had never heard of it. The only reason he could keep up at all was because he knew what a demogorgon was. He and his friends loved Dungeons & Dragons growing up. They had finished one game after three years just before the fire. Derek hadn’t touched the game since. 

Melissa, who had talked to Laura for most of dinner, finally turned to him around the time everyone was finishing up their plates and asked him if he was looking for a job. Derek looked first at Laura, who nodded and smiled, and then back to Melissa. “Uh, yeah?” 

He looked at Laura again who rolled her eyes and sighed. “He would love a job that would help take up the hundreds of hours he uses up sulking in his room.”

“I don’t sulk. I read.”

“What the hell is the difference?” she asked, exasperated. 

Instead of answering, John nudges his shoulder and takes his attention away from his sister. “Did you go to college?” The question seems random, but when Derek nods, the sheriff looks pleased. “Good. We’re looking to hire a few new deputies. Would you be interested?”

A few weeks later when Derek walks into the coffee shop for the fifth time and sees Stiles behind the counter, his back turned to the door, he feels a little self-conscious. He just finished training a few days ago and had been assigned to Boyd as his partner, who had easily been talked into joining the force the same night. Today was their first day on the job together. Boyd was waiting in the cruiser and keeping an ear on the radio while Derek had been put on coffee duty.

When Stiles turned around and dropped the empty glass he was holding, Derek frowned. “Jesus, dude.” Derek noticed his heart had immediately started beating in overdrive, quick as a rabbit’s. 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Derek looked down at the shattered glass on the floor. Stiles was ignoring it in favor of looking at Derek sporting his new uniform. When he looked down at his beige form and back up at Stiles who was slack-jawed and smelling suddenly much sweeter. “Um…” 

“Right! Coffee! Your usual, and something for your partner?” Stiles immediately went into action making Derek’s coffee.

“Boyd, yeah.” 

“Great! His coffee is just as boring as yours, you know? Two dudes who drink black coffee with one pump of sugar. Couldn’t ask for an easier order unless you held the sugar.” Stiles voice was a little shrill, but Derek had no idea why. Instead he quietly watched Stiles pour two to go cups and hand them over. When Derek offered the money to pay for it though, Stiles waved it off. “On the house. Happy first day of work!” Quickly he fled to the back and out of sight. Still, Derek heard him say under his breath, “Fucking Christ are you kidding me?” 

It was an accident really, when he ran into Jackson at the grocery store. It was awkward at first when they made eye contact over the fruit, but when Jackson threw a perfect avocado at Derek they started walking down the aisles together. Conversation was not easy, per se, but it was clear that Jackson was trying, which was saying a lot. Derek offered his own brief comments and quips and they both shared a fit of laughter when a woman commented under her breath how unfair it was that all the hot ones were gay. Derek hadn’t corrected her, even to Jackson. When they were done, Jackson bumped their shoulders together. Derek let his hand grab lightly at the back of Jackson’s neck before he made his way to the Camaro. 

It felt like progress.

The next barbeque was a few weeks later and Derek and Boyd were both late because they were coming off the end of their shift. The sheriff told them they could finish it up at the barbeque so long as they had their radios on, but they had stumbled on a robbery at one of the convenience stores near the preserve. By the time they arrived everyone was finished with dinner and was already digging into dessert. 

John praised them on their good work for the night and Derek smiled. The look in the sheriff’s eyes was nothing short of pride and joy and it was more fulfilling than anything he had felt since coming back to Beacon Hills. 

By the time Derek was finished with his dinner––thank God Melissa had set aside a couple plates for him and Boyd so they could have some––he was exhausted. The rest of the wolves were energized and jumpy thanks to the upcoming full moon, but Derek was ready to take a nice, hot shower, and fall into bed for hours. 

Laura suggested a run through the preserve. Most of the other wolves didn’t know the significance of running together, but one look from Laura had him agreeing to it. This could be the tipping point for the wolves to join their pack. He knew as well as Laura that having this ragtag group join their pack would settle them here for good. It was far too important to the Hale’s to have Derek sitting on the sidelines. 

Both Derek and Laura had mastered the full shift long ago. Most of the time Derek could only do it close to or on the full moon. Laura began stripping right there in front of everyone and Derek huffed out a laugh. “Now? In front of everyone?” he asked. 

“They have to know sooner or later. Why not? Get your fur on, Derek, and run with me like we used to.” Her voice was soft with sadness, but hopeful. He could never say no to her.

“John, will you look after my holster?” he asked as he unbuckled it and handed it over. 

“Son, are you about to strip, too?” Derek shrugged one shoulder. The sheriff took the holster and put it on the table. 

Derek had been trying––and failing––to pay attention to Stiles the entire night. He knew Stiles didn’t really like him if their past few interactions were anything to go by. It was no surprise then, that Stiles seemed to be disbelieving and possibly angry when Derek took off his shirt and folded it neatly to put on the table beside his holster. He kept his undershirt and underwear on and turned to face Laura, who was completely naked and uncaring. 

Laura addressed the rest of them, told them not to be afraid, before turning back to Derek. “Ready baby brother?” she said with a wicked grin. 

Derek felt the pull of the moon under his skin and flashed his eyes at his alpha. A few seconds later he felt the shift. It was quick and slightly painful, especially after so long without fully shifting it so long. But when it was complete he heard Stiles gasp and call out “Holy shit!” 

In the next instant Laura was tilting her head back and howling. Derek joined in a second later, calling out to their pack. Boyd, Erica, and Isaac quickly followed, and then, shockingly, so did Jackson and Scott. Laura cut off her howl and head butted Derek so hard he stumbled to the side and knocked into the sheriff, who didn’t smell anything other than curious and amazed. Derek lifted himself up onto all four and knocked his head into the sheriff’s side, scenting him quickly before turning to do the same to Melissa and Lydia. Danny and Stiles were stroking Laura’s fur, marking her in their own way. Derek head butted Danny’s lower back and nosed hesitantly at Stiles’ legs, unsure even though he smelled nothing short of ecstatic. 

Before Stiles could turn and run his hands over Derek the same way he did Laura, the alpha was howling once more and bolting off into the forest. Derek yipped and followed after her. He heard the other wolves do the same and run through the forest after them. 

Derek and the rest of the pack tackled and ran after each other for hours. He was hardly aware of how long they were in the woods until he finally grew so tired that he started making his way back towards the house. Still in his wolf form, he broke through the trees to see Stiles the only one left. He was laying on a blanket looking at the stars with his hands behind his head. Exhausted, Derek didn’t think much of what he was doing and followed his instincts that told him to go lay down curled up next to him. 

When Stiles noticed him as he was walking over, his heart rate picked up. For a moment Derek hesitated thinking he had scared him. But then Stiles was beckoning him with an outstretched hand and bright eyes. Derek bumped his head into Stiles’ hand and walked forward so that his hand moved to his neck as he settled down onto the blanket with him. He let his head rest on top of Stiles’ stomach. He growled lightly and nosed the fabric out of the way so his muzzle could rest on his exposed skin. The action made Stiles giggle, but he didn’t cover himself back up. 

With Stiles running his hand over his head and neck, Derek fell into a deep sleep within minutes. 

When he woke up, he was curled up protectively around Stiles, who had both of his hands in the nape of Derek’s eck clutching at his fur, but they were no longer alone. The pack was intertwined with limbs askew to touch everyone else. Derek made no move to get up, but instead let his head settle back onto Stiles’ stomach and fell back asleep almost instantly, his wolf finding safety and comfort in having his pack so close. 

It was the grumbling of the stomach underneath him that finally woke Derek up a second time. The smell of bacon and pancakes greeted him when he lifted his head. “Hey there, big guy.” Stiles was alone on the blanket, but his pack’s scent was still fresh around them. “Want some breakfast?” Derek shifted, but didn’t move. He enjoyed this position far too much and it was the only time he had ever gotten Stiles all to himself. His stomach was still on display and Derek let his nose roam freely up to his sternum and back down to where the trail of hair led into his pants. “Probably need a shower, don’t i?” Stiles laughed. Derek huffed out a quick breath as if to disagree. He smelled like coffee and hazelnuts and something that couldn’t be explained. It was comforting and made Derek’s wolf want to roll over and show his belly. 

“Derek, get your ass up and let the kid eat,” Laura ordered from the porch. Derek flashed his eyes and started to get up with a low growl. “Oh hush you big idiot. If you’d get your head out of your ass you could cuddle him whenever you wanted. He’d totally be into it… naked.” 

Stiles shot up into a sitting position and gawked at Laura. His heart rate picked up. “Laura! You––but––you said you wouldn’t blab!” Laura grinned and walked back into the house. Stiles turned to Derek who had shifted back and covered himself with a spare blanket. “Oh my god. You’re naked.”

“Um, yeah.” he said dumbly, still trying to understand what just happened. 

It seemed that Stiles was going to explain. “Look, what Laura said. I mean. That was something she was supposed to keep to herself. It was said when I was drunk, so it doesn’t even count! Not that it isn’t true, of course, but you aren’t even into dudes! Especially not me! And you can just forget what she said and we can continue our weird kind-of-friendship where we barely talk to each other even though I would totally love to hear your opinions on just about everything. Laura told me you were a total nerd, but I don’t believe her because I mean look at you!”

“Stiles.” Derek frowned. “What are you saying?” He tried not to think too much about it, but what Stiles was saying made his hopes start to raise. 

“Just ignore my stupid feelings for you and we can go back to normal.” His cheeks were deep red. It was adorable. 

Instead of doing what was asked, Derek leaned forward and let his nose trail across those overheated cheeks. “I thought you hated me,” he admitted. When Stiles turned to speak, Derek interrupted him with a slow open mouthed kiss. Whatever Stiles was about to say was forgotten about as he reciprocated. 

“Good lord, son. Go put some clothes on,” John ordered a few minutes later. Derek pulled away quickly and flushed. “Glad you two finally figured things out.” Derek heard him say to Stiles as he made his way to the garage for a fresh set of clothes.

“Yeah.” Derek smiled at the dreamy tone and when he turned to look over his shoulder at Stiles, he saw that he was watching. Derek smiled brightly and let part of the blanket fall. “Gotta go! I’ll eat later.” Stiles ran towards Derek. John sighed and called after them to be safe.

The sixth time Derek walked into the coffee shop he was holding hands with his boyfriend who was no longer a barista. Their pack took up three tables and they drank half of the coffee in the shop.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to everyone who leaves kudos and comments (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
> 
> Find me on tumblr! www.iamswarls.tumblr.com


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